Deferring to Home
by truly-tazi
Summary: Post Chosen:Btvs - Not Fade Away:Ats. It all went wrong. Pre-Slash. Xander/Spike


Xander crouched in the corner of his cold, damp cell, trying desperately to curl into himself. Arms wrapped tightly around his legs, knees pressed hard into his chest, he squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the slight twinge of pain from the empty deformed socket, and tried hard to block out the world around him.

How could things have gone so terribly wrong?

One moment they were on top of the world. The First Evil had been beaten, the planet was suddenly overrun with slayers, their numbers so great that demons of all varieties were laying low, trying to go undetected, and the nights were safe once again for humans to walk the streets unmolested.

The next moment... He should have known it was too good to be true. Things never went smoothly until just before going very, very wrong.

Fucking Deadboy. He should have known it would be him. He tried to tell them that bastard was no good. Soul or no soul, he was trouble waiting to happen, and Xander seemed to be the only one to see it coming.

He still wasn't sure what exactly had happened in LA, but whatever it was had to have been big... and very, very bad. It only took three days for the darkness to take over. The sun still rose, but never quite made it through the clouds enough for it to be considered sunny.

With the darkness came the danger. Demons who were once afraid to roam the streets rediscovered the courage to come out of hiding and wreak havoc. Slayers who once thought themselves to be many were now too few. They were quickly overpowered, taken by surprise by the intensity of the attack.

With the first massive attack came their rude awakening. Although slayers were dying, none were being called. Their forces were not being replenished. When word of this unfortunate glitch got out and it became widely known that once the slayers had been killed there would be no more, the attacks became more intense, more vicious.

They fought with everything they had, but it wasn't enough. They still hadn't completely rebuilt the council after the First destroyed it. They scrambled to pull their forces together, but by the time they realized just how bad the situation had become, it was already too late.

Xander had tried to get back to them, to be there to help his friends, but he never made it. He was captured before he'd ever reached the States.

To this day he doesn't understand why they hadn't killed him on sight. He'd seen what had happened to the other humans he'd been traveling with. He still had to fight to keep the bile down at the thought of how they'd been tortured before being allowed to die.

For some reason he'd been separated from the rest. The biggest, ugliest of the demons that had captured them had gotten in his face and he'd been sure his head was going to be bitten off, but the demon had stopped, hesitated, looked at him closer, eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring. The next thing he knew he was being thrown in a crate and carted off to this version of hell.

He hadn't understood much of anything he'd overheard, but every so often a word that his brain could register would be caught on the wind. Scent... Property... Pet... Debt... He had no idea what it meant other than it was the reason he was still alive. He didn't know whether or not that was a good thing, and was too afraid to give it much thought.

He shifted slightly as his backside started to go numb. The soft rattle of his chains across the hard cement broke his concentration and he opened his eyes.

The dim yellow light from under his cell door cast a faint glow on the dingy wall beside him. His eye caught on the markings there and he gently ran his finger tips over the etchings. Six weeks. Had it really only been six weeks since heaven became hell and his life had become one long never ending nightmare?

He wanted to cry, but the tears, having run dry long ago, wouldn't come. His head ached from thinking, his body ached from days... no weeks of being treated like an animal, and more than anything else, his heart ached because he had no way of knowing if his friends were alive or dead.

He cringed when he heard footsteps in the hall coming toward his door. This was not the normal time of day for a 'visit' and he was terrified to think what that might mean. What new horror was he going to have to survive now?

The door to the cell opened and the footsteps got closer as his 'visitors' entered. He kept his eye averted to the wall and refused to acknowledge their presence. It was the only act of rebellion he had left that would go unpunished, and truth be told, he really did not care to see what was going to happen next.

The first voice he recognized as that of the head demon. Again most of what the demon said was unrecognizable to him, but the same few words made it through. Scent... Pet... Property... Debt...

Then the other demon spoke and Xander's heart jumped into his throat. He willed himself not to react and kept breathing at a slow even rate. He knew that voice. He wasn't sure what the voice was saying, as he was speaking the same language the other demon had spoken, but the voice... He was sure it was him. He didn't know how it could be, but it was.

Xander tried harder to listen to the conversation, his interest now acute. Something, something, again with the property, something, debt. More banter back and forth, none of which Xander understood, and then movement and the sound of keys.

The next thing he knew he was looking at a pair of battered old docs and his chains were being unlocked.

He could only stare at his wrists, raw from weeks of being bound in steel, and realized he was afraid to move. Was this a dream? If he moved would he wake up?

His heart started racing at the thought and he was sure he was having a heart attack until the painful tugging of hair brought him out of it and caused him to focus on the demon in front of him.

Looking up he found himself trapped in pools of crystal blue; eyes that were at the same time both hard and soft. The face they belonged to looked as if it were chiseled from stone, and the harshness of it would have made him cower away if it were not for the eyes that begged him to understand.

"You belong to me. Submit, pet, it's time to go home."

Home? Did such a place even still exist? Looking deeper into those soft, pleading eyes, Xander thought, maybe there is.

Crawling forward, he placed his forehead on top of those battered docs and placed his faith in Spike.

The End

word count 1190


End file.
